Tuesday, May 28, 2002

The mayoral election just concluded in Newark, N.J., was one of the ugliest in memory. It involved the old, entrenched mayor, Sharpe James, and a saner, more moderate upstart, Cory Booker. Both men were black, of course — but some of the most vicious racial politics in this country are intra-black politics. The likes of Sharpe James always play “blacker than thou” — and this is a matter of mouth and posturing, not shade.

James derided Cory Booker as “neo-black” (which is cute, I grant you). The James campaign slogan was “The Real Deal” — everyone in Newark knew what it meant, trust me. James said that Booker was a mere tool of the Right, and of whites. (Both men, naturally, are Democrats — but Booker is open to such notions as school choice and non-theft in government.) The New York Sun reproduced a cartoon that the James campaign had purveyed: It showed a factory, at which “neo-black politicos” were being made. In succession were Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and the challenger, Cory Booker. Two white men were in the foreground, chomping cigars and grinning. They were labeled “right-wing foundations.” One was saying to the other, “They’re so popular, we can’t produce them fast enough.” The other was saying, “I hear they always sell out.”

James won, of course — but only with 53 percent of the vote, which should give some cause for hope. The entire (white) Democratic establishment in New Jersey was behind him.

On the subject of racial politics — intra-black politics — I remember very well a mayoral race in Detroit. It pitted Dennis Archer, who became mayor, against a woman named Sharon McPhail. Now, McPhail was a very, very light-skinned woman — freckles and all. She probably could have passed. And her entire campaign was geared to the idea that Archer — who was infinitely darker than she — wasn’t “black” enough. She talked constantly of Archer’s (alleged) white support (not that such support, even if it had existed, would’ve mattered a lick in Detroit). I thought this was a stunning example of racial politics: that Sharon McPhail should try to out-black Dennis Archer — and get away with it, really.

And I always suspected, too, that one reason Archer’s predecessor, Coleman Young, was so aggressive, crude, and racist was that, as a light-skinned man (also with freckles), he was always trying to prove his credentials. No one could “out-black” him. Young may have been the most vilely racist man I ever witnessed — although he has some stiff competition.

Monday, May 27, 2002

Sunday, May 26, 2002

Daniel Schweimler writes, "Addressing a crowd of about 300,000 people in the central city of Sancti Spiritus, [Castro] said not a drop of American blood had been spilt because of terrorist acts commissioned by Cuba." Yeah, but what about the blood of non-Americans?

More : "But the Cuban authorities accused [President Bush] of playing to the Cuban exile community in Florida to ensure that his brother, Jeb, is re-elected as governor later this year." Unlikely. But even if that were the case, at least we allow elections!

In September, the Social Democrats (Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's party) will lose seats. The Christian Democrats will gain seats. But the big winner will be Guido Westerwelle and his Free Democrats. Schroder will dump the Greens and take the Free Democrats into his coalition. This means Schroder remains Chancellor, but with a center-right coalition as opposed to the center-left coalition he currently heads.

He writes, "A few days ago, a New Jersey couple in their early 20s sat down in front of an oncoming Amtrak train and were killed instantly. Authorities say the pair was addicted to heroin and spent thousands of dollars a month on the drug. Shortly before the suicide, the couple had been evicted from their apartment for non-payment of rent. Relatives say both individuals were in despair."

He continues, "So what about the people who sold the heroin to these Americans? What is their responsibility? Some will argue the pushers have no responsibility, that the users make the choice. But that is nonsense. If nobody sold drugs, there would be no drug problem."

Supply and Demand, Bill! Didn't they ever teach this basic principle at Harvard?

If there is a strong enough demand for something, there will always be a supply. The only way to eradicate the supply is to destroy the demand. And, sadly, there is still a strong demand for illegal drugs despite every effort of the government.

Bill goes on, "You may have also heard about little Rilya Wilson, the 4-year-old foster child in Florida who has been missing for 16 months. Rilya's mother is a crack addict. She had not contacted her child in nearly two years. When Rilya turned up missing, that despicable mother reportedly made noise about suing the state of Florida. It turned my stomach."

And then, "So what about the people who sold crack to Rilya's mother? Are they not partially responsible for the abandonment of the little girl?"

Nope. Call me old-fashioned, Bill, but I tend to believe that the welfare of this child is the responsibility of the mother of this child, not someone who engaged in a business transaction with the mother. If Joe Blow is a drunk and runs over a little girl in the street, who is responsible, Joe or the guy at the 7-11 who sold Joe that six-pack of Bud?

Look, drugs are bad. But as a society, we have to decide which is worse : People who provide a product to others who willingly spend their own money for the personal use of that product, or the State tossing all these folks in prison with hard-core murderers and rapists?

[Bill] Clinton: "He hasn't told me yet whether he's [Al Gore] going to run. If he does, of course, at the outset he would be the front-runner. But I think he recognizes that under these circumstances, like every other Democrat, he'll have to make his case; but obviously he's got a lot of friends around America and a lot of people that know we won the popular vote last time and a lot of people think we won the vote in Florida last time. I'm one of them."

Yeah, Slick Willie. And there are a lot of people who think that you're a rapist. I'm one of them.

Should private chats over the internet be kept private, say, by the same laws that disallow the tape-recording of phone conversations? Or is this kind of back-stabbing by a "friend" perfectly acceptable?

I didn't see this particular exchange on the Sam & Cokie show … but several people have provided me with various versions of the exchange between her and George Stephanopoulos. The topic at hand was arming commercial airline pilots.

Cokie Roberts is reported to have said something to the effect of "What if the pilot goes nuts and starts shooting people?" George's response? If the pilot goes nuts, he can just crash the airplane.

Near the bottom of the page, it says Kofi Annan "condemns 'despicable' suicide attack in Israeli town of Rishon Letzion". Lovely. (Too bad the General Assembly voted 74-4 yesterday to condemn Israel, without even a passing mention of Palestinian suicide terror.)

Then, just below that item is another piece that says "Annan calls for action to end 'despicable' practice of conscripting children". Wow, more "despicable" stuff? Is the UN being run by Sylvester the Cat or what?

An American living in Europe writes to NRO : "The one thing that really strikes me about the murder of Pim Fortuyn is the pictures they have been showing on all the news channels. The one where he is having food thrown at him at a press conference. Whatever happened to those folks? Were they arrested? Was anything done to them? How can the Dutch Left be so shocked by the violent death of a politician when they ignored (or cheered) the first steps of leaving debate and argument behind? ... You cannot imagine what it is like here. Le Pen inspires marches, not debate (Chirac wouldn't allow that to happen). Berlusconi's labour advisor is himself gunned down. Has the left become so bankrupt that they cannot even enter the arena of ideas? After all, Le Pen isn't that hard to argue with, is he? The sad thing is, what is the life of politics in Europe is the life of academia in the United States. How long before our politics degrades to this level?"

He brings up the issue of private American financial support for the IRA. He's right that such support is vile. But the American government never sent millions of dollars direct to the IRA to foment terrorism against Britain. Yet the EU funnels vast sums to Yassir Arafat's terrorist organizations, with no checks, no standards, no accountability. That money is used to kill Jews. And Chris Patten helps dispense it. And that's largely all you need to know.